Law On Guns At School Must Go To Back Of Class

Tamara Dietrich

The wackiest thing about guns at school in Virginia isn't what's not allowed -- it's what is allowed.

A school can expel a student, for instance, for so much as a water pistol. School policies are strict that way, and no wonder.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Friday, May 26, 2006. In Tamara Dietrich's column in Sunday's Local News section, a quote from anti-gun activist Pamela Pouchot should have read, "But until our government agencies are willing to change the law, we have to live with the law." (Text corrected.)

Meanwhile, though, the state doesn't care if a student takes a very real firearm to school, so long as it's unloaded and in a "closed container."

This would all be academic, if a bit schizoid, except that students in Hampton Roads are not just getting expelled for having unloaded firearms in closed containers -- they're also getting arrested, fingerprinted, booked and charged with felonies.

In two recent cases, high school seniors were arrested for having unloaded rifles in locked vehicle trunks -- i.e., closed containers -- on campus.

Eventually, prosecutors stopped prosecuting them, but not before both teenagers ended up with felony arrest records that could haunt them for the rest of their lives. And one young man spent four days in jail. All for crimes that, according to state code, were never committed.

"Every place we have managed to step in, there was a definite lack of knowledge," says Pam Pouchot of the Virginia Committee for Gun-Free Schools.

And if it wasn't a lack of knowledge, "that's even scarier -- it means you knew there wasn't a crime committed, but didn't care. You were going forward, anyway."

York County-Poquoson Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Benjamin Hahn says he recognized that 18-year-old Jonathan Spikes didn't commit a crime when the 12th-grader put an unloaded .22 rifle in his hatchback one day last November and drove to school. Spike was arrested, but Hahn filed a motion not to prosecute and the case ended two months later.

"Everyone's natural reaction, unfortunately, in our present day world is to think, 'Gun, firearm on school grounds, my goodness, it's serious,'" Hahn said Friday.

But it's not illegal.

Why?

"You're gonna have to ask our General Assembly members that question," Hahn said.

Pouchot has tried for years to get General Assembly members to take guns at school as seriously as everyone else seems to.

She figures that if schools, police and prosecutors assume, initially, at least, that a student bringing an unloaded firearm to school is a crime -- even if it's in a locked container -- why don't state lawmakers simply make it a crime?

The answer, of course, is the state's powerful gun lobby, and the longstanding tradition that Virginia is for gun-lovers.

And so frustration forces anti-gun crusader Pouchot to become an odd defender of gun-toting students like Spikes and 19-year-old high school senior Corey Benton of Norfolk, likewise charged with a felony for having an unloaded rifle in the trunk of his vehicle earlier this month.

Benton spent four days in jail before the commonwealth's attorney finally filed a motion to stop his prosecution.

"It was definitely wrong on their part," Benton told me Friday. "It was definitely an abuse of power."

Benton, who hopes for a career in rap music, won't get into what he was doing with the rifle in his trunk in the first place. Only that it had been there a while and he'd forgotten about it.

Even though Pouchot sprang to the defense of Benton and Spikes, they both would still be facing felony charges if she had her druthers.

"I don't want them to be victims," Pouchot says. "I want them to be guilty little miscreants. But the law thinks they're not.

"I have said to every parent I've spoken with, 'Let me be perfectly clear. My first goal would be to get a law passed that would keep your child in jail. But until our government agencies are willing to change the law, we have to live with the law.' "

So she wrangles with school officials, police and prosecutors, doing her darndest to blow holes in every case she can.

"My goal," Pouchot says, "is, I hope, to make 'em mad enough to get on board."

Her agenda is as strict as a school board's, and no wonder, she used to sit on one. Pouchet wants to make schools gun-free zones, period.

Until her utopia arrives, however, state lawmakers can and should at least codify what so many educated people assume is already so: make it a crime for students to bring a firearm to school, unloaded, unlocked or otherwise.

And if you're a principal, police chief, sheriff or commonwealth's attorney, the next time a student is caught at school with an unloaded firearm in the trunk of his car, don't waste your time with a felony charge. Call your state lawmaker and ask if he or she has any suggestions.

Tamara Dietrich can be reached at tdietrich@dailypress.com or at 247-7892. *